In addition, our microbial genomic expertise helps companies track down the source of contamination in product spoilage cases or during recalls and our understanding of biofilm formation is helping the dairy industry in plant cleaning and sanitation.

Food safety and quality case study: Moira Mac’s

Moira Mac’s is a family owned meat processing business based in Bendigo, Victoria, specialising in ready-to-eat poultry products.

Consumer demands have evolved since Dean and Moira Russell first established the company in 1983. In response, Moira Mac’s has adopted high pressure processing, enabling them to develop new product lines that extend the shelf-life of processed meats without chemical preservatives or a high salt content.

We worked with the company in implementing the technology into their business as well as verifying processing conditions for the inactivation of Listeria monocytogenes in their high pressure processed chicken pieces.

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Goodman Fielder is a food company with a long tradition of supplying consumers in Australia and New Zealand and the Pacific area with a number of food products, among them dressings and mayonnaise and sauces of all kinds.

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The challenge on this project was that we’re both looking at a taste improvement with the elimination or reduction of vinegar, and at the same time addressing the major health and wellness issue in reducing the amount of sugar and salt in our product, while guaranteeing the perfect food safety.

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We came to CSIRO with a problem.

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They introduced us to FIAL and the SME Solution Centre, and together we developed a solution for our dressings that was reformulated to our taste, and at the same time with perfect food safety.

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We were quite happy to see that CSIRO had already developed a number of solutions that matched exactly what we were looking for potentially in terms of addressing this need for new tastes, while guaranteeing the food safety.

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Through the SME Solution Centre we’re able to access FIAL’s funding, and CSIRO expertise, which helped us significantly to achieve the goals that we started out with.

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We couldn’t have done the work in-house fundamentally because we do not have the scientific capability.

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The difference from where we were before and where we are today as a result of this relationship between FIAL, ourselves, and CSIRO, is the fact that we did not have to invest in scientific capabilities that would take a number of years to materialise and to bear fruit, and we had immediate access to an existing knowledge base that was at arm’s reach for us.

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And we could immediately see the results by co-operating, by working together in a very collaborative manner.

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The SME Solution Centre, which is a partnership between FIAL and CSIRO, has provided training via CSIRO to our new product development team in the use of the tool. That training has a major impact in the way we reformulate products for this project and beyond.

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The relationship in the future, it can only go further and further and further, because obviously when you have success in one area we immediately become curious about what else we could do.

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There are a number of other opportunities, not just problems, but opportunities to create new ideas and bring those ideas into concepts that eventually can become projects for the future.

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Welcome to CSIRO's food innovation centre

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Narrator: Consumer demand for healthy, convenient, new and safe food products is rising and market growth in the Asian region is booming.

More than ever manufacturing innovation is critical for the Australian food industry to capture these opportunities and be globally competitive.

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At our Food Innovation Centre we work with the food and beverage manufacturing industry to meet these opportunities and add value to their business.

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We help companies innovate by creating next generation value added food products and ingredients, improving operating efficiencies, licensing ready to go technologies, making industry connections and adopting and developing new technologies and applications for safer, fresher, healthier and sustainably produced foods and more.

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In the last few years we’ve helped our clients create hundreds of millions of dollars in new food product and ingredient sales locally and in export markets.

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This includes more than 25 new products in the retail market nationally.

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Companies are invited to use our manufacturing equipment to develop and launch new products into the market or collaborate with us strategically on breakthrough technologies.

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Through our facilities in Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney we have the most significant and extensive food innovation expertise available in Australia.

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Our pilot plants are unique facilities with a mix of conventional and emerging technologies supported by world class science.

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Our expertise in sensory, flavour, consumer science and food choices is unique helping companies develop new or redefine their existing products. We help industry manage their food safety and product shelf life and meet food safety regulations in export markets.

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We’re also helping Australian food companies meet the rapidly growing demand in Asia for high value products.

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Our researchers help companies reformulate to reduce salt, sugar and fat and develop fortified products with functional health benefits while still meeting the taste preferences of consumers.

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We also work with manufacturers to substantiate food and ingredient health claims with expertise in lab scale analysis through to human nutrition trials.

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Whether you’re a small company with a novel idea or a large one looking to outsource key R and D services companies benefit every day from partnering with CSIRO.

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